360 Has Best Launch Lineup Ever?

J. Allard had a chat with Edge magazine about the launch lineup of the Xbox 360, and makes the claim that they have the best launch lineup ever associated with a console. He also talks about the overall vision they had for the launch, and how well their expectations are being met. From the article: "I think it's pretty much spot on. I spoke with someone who was very involved in the planning about three years ago - he came over for about five minutes to drop something off and ended up spending three hours looking at all the capabilities of the machine, and he said, 'Son of a gun, if you guys didn't do 95 per cent of the original vision of the machine!' And I looked at him and said, 'Well, what was the other five per cent, what did we drop?' and he said, 'I don't know. I couldn't find it!'"

Comments

not saying much

[ThePepe]

Well that certainly doesnt say much for the previous consoles' release lineups.

No.

[vertinox]

We'll reserve the best launch linup for NES "Duckhunt/Mario" combo catridge.

Remember the times when consoles would come with a game that was good enough to play for very very long time before buying a new game?

Wow

[nocent]

News flash! Microsoft executive claims Microsoft product has best launch ever!

Re:This won't go over well on slashdot

[badasscat]

Most of the release titles were sequels of solid games (COD, Perfect Dark, EA sports games). These are phenominal launch titles because they are easier to create and already have a fan base.

So what you're saying is that this launch features a bunch of generic, lowest-common-demoninator sequels that appeal to people who have already played the previous versions.

This is a good launch lineup? At best, it will appeal to some of those who already own Xboxes. It will not initiate any interest in anyone beyond that. This is the problem when you have a launch lineup that's mainly a bunch of sports games and sequels.

Good launches always have at least one "must-have" game that shows off what the new system is capable of and/or offers a new gameplay experience. They also have to have most of the popular genres represented. The Xbox 360 has most genres represented (though it's missing a few important ones, like fighting games and RPG's), but it has no must-haves whatsoever. There is nothing in the 360's launch lineup that makes me go "wow! I've never seen anything that cool before, and I have to have it." There's no equivalent to Super Mario or Soul Calibur or even the original Ridge Racer in there (no, RR6 just doesn't carry the same cachet). MS obviously thinks there is in PD0 and CoD2, but these are sequels - they are basically graphical upgrades to previous games that a lot of people have already played. They may have a few gameplay tweaks but the core gameplay is nothing we haven't seen before.

I'd say the 360 launch lineup is middling. It's not the worst ever (go look up something like the Intellivision launch lineup), but there have been better ones, including the PS2, PS1, Coleco Vision, NES, SNES, Game Boy, N64, and Dreamcast. Not all of these systems had the same quantity as the Xbox 360 but they all had at least one game that everybody just had to play, and in some cases they had several.

I don't think the 360 launch lineup will hurt or help the console; I think it will mainly be forgotten about once the next round of games comes out.

Re:The Xbox 360 philosophy?

[DarKnyht]

"Sitting down with Xbox's J Allard six months ago, at the 360's unveiling, two things became very quickly apparent. The first was that this was a machine built around a philosophy, not a set of tech specs."

Hmm... odd I seem to remember Microsoft and Sony getting into a peeing contest over their specs, and Nintendo being the only one to state that specs didn't matter three months ago.